Public sector managers sometimes feel like they are caught in a paradox. Consider the following scenario. Janelle is a division director going to her agency’s budget meeting, where she will negotiate her division’s budget. As she leaves her office, Janelle’s staff yells, “Bring home the bacon!” During the budget meeting, however, she is persuaded that her division should take a budget cut to free up funds for an important priority in another division in the agency. She will, therefore, not bring home the bacon.
Has Janelle failed in her role as the champion for her division? Or was she right to work with her peers to jointly identify budget priorities for the agency? In this simple scenario, the answer may seem as obvious as this cartoon, made popular by groups working in the field of systems thinking.
Day-to-day life in the public sector, however, is more nuanced and complex. A manager who is directly accountable for the performance of or his or her division (or agency, program, etc.) is considered quite rational to want to garner resources even though it may be irrational for the larger system. Indeed, while calls for collaboration are common these days, fragmented management – each unit working in its own “silo” – is alive and well in the public sector. Or as one manager remarked wryly: “You don’t mean our silos, you mean our ‘cylinders of excellence!’”
This behavior is natural given how agencies are structured. Personnel are organized into units, each with a manager who has the title of “director” or “chief” of the unit. The manager is in charge of the unit and is held accountable and rewarded for the performance of the unit. It is not hard to see, therefore, why a manager would feel torn when asked to choose between accountability for the performance of the manager’s unit and some sense of shared accountability for the performance of the larger agency or system.
The public sector is too dynamic for managers to act as if their units are simply parts of an assembly line performing routine, separate processes determined from above. Indeed, inflexible, “command and control” hierarchies in the public sector are notorious for fostering cultures in which decisions are made at a glacial pace. These decisions are often made with little appreciation for the realities of the “front line,” and because units operate in silos, the “right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing.” Unfortunately, when the limits of command and control management are not appreciated, the public sector seeks to solve its “silos” problem by “reorganizing” the silos, expending valuable time and money only to discover that the inflexible culture persists, regardless of the changes made in the organizational chart.
Results-Based Accountability™ (RBA) provides a simple way to manage this “accountability paradox” – a way to structure decision-making that makes shared accountability for the “whole” and accountability for one’s “part” possible.
The most important example of this approach is the fundamental distinction in RBA between the management of joint accountability for conditions of well being for whole populations – conditions like Healthy People, Safe Communities, or Prosperous Economies (“Population Accountability”) – and the management of accountability for the performance of a program, agency, or service system in serving its clients or customers (“Performance Accountability”). In RBA, decision-making begins with Population Accountability, i.e., determine, first, what we need to do. Then, decision making proceeds to Performance Accountability, i.e., determine, second, whether we are doing those things right. Population Accountability inherently involves multiples stakeholders: you would never hold the manager of a jobs training program solely accountable for the employment rate in a city.
This same approach – distinguishing joint accountability for the “whole” from accountability for a “part” – applies equally at the intersection between a “whole” government and an agency or program that is a “part” of that government. And it applies at any other intersection between a “whole” unit and a “part” of that unit. In each case, it is possible to manage the “accountability paradox” by structuring decision-making to consider the whole before the parts.
This still leaves one question. When should managers advocate for their programs? The answer is simple: when they believe that additional investments in that program are among the most important responses to problems “of the whole” at the level of joint accountability. To test this point of view, use the arguments with peers and see if they agree. In other words, model the behavior of concern for the whole before concern for your program. You will raise the quality of the debate, increase your own credibility, and help advance the purposes of the organization in a rational and defensible way. And when your program gets more money, it will be clearly deserved in the eyes of your peers.
About the author:
Philip Lee is President of Clear Impact. Mr. Lee designs and teaches executive programs in results leadership, Results-Based Accountability, organizational development, and negotiation. Mr. Lee also consults and facilitates group processes. Mr. Lee’s work has included helping the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Health Resources and Services Administration design and implement a performance review system for $6 billion in grants to 3,000 grantees nationwide. He has also designed, and since 2001 delivered, the National Institutes of Health Senior Leadership Program. Mr. Lee earned his J.D. from the University of Maryland School of Law and his Master of Public Management from the University of Maryland School of Public Policy, with a concentration in public sector financial management. Mr. Lee also studied negotiation at the Harvard Program for Lawyers.
Leave A Comment